Introduction

Two popular backup utilities in the open source world:

• Amanda
• Bacula

Comparison

• Comparison on pack rat studios
• Comaprison on Bacula wiki

Client-Server interaction diagrams

• Amanda interaction diagram
• Bacula interaction diagram
• Bacula has a complex architecture but it gives more flexibility in terms of configuration. Bacula maintains a catalog (metadata about job) of backup and restore jobs in the database. The use of external database for maintaining job information introduces dependancy on another application. I came across few forum posts which reported database crash when the size of the database grew by great extent. Bacula does take care of this issue by taking backup of database itself, however this means more IO and processor time being consumed.
• One can control which hosts are allowed to access particular backup server or client in case of Amanda. This functionality is absent in Bacula as of now. Bacula checks access rights using username and password parameters.

Installation

• Amanda installation guide
• Bacula installation guide

Adding backup tasks

• Amanda
• Bacula

Restoring data

• Amanda
• Bacula